No disagreement from me. Since the institution of the "buy your way up" program the upgrade roulette game has certainly changed. United clearly views some of these things as cash cows that cost them nothing. I'd have to say the same thing about the borderline fraudulent design of the online check-in process now...where the button has you buying premium line/boarding and you actually have to click the little 5 pt font "skip this" to avoid it... The darn thing even comes up if you are an elite flyer who already has the premium boarding line..but I'll bet there are plenty of people who just hit the button and pay the fee.

I have no problem with United making money (even the sale of the upgrades in this manner) but personally I consider the design of the website to be optimized to make revenue and very misleading....clearly creating "yes" and 'no" buttons of equal size might cost them some revenue by eliminating the accidental purchases, but I think it would earn them some good will with the public. Of course we all know about United management's commitment to goodwill of the general flying public vis-a-vis revenue...

[/rant mode] Sorry for the rant, but that part of the website is a pet peeve of mine!